Gina, Joe and Justin's Backpacking Experience

Chiang Mai

gborchers3 — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 08:43:00 GMT

Chiang Mai

(warning this is super long...if you want just the funny part skip the the very bottom )

Well, we've had our first official airline problem, and for the first time in the history of problems JOE was the recipient! Its kinda weak as far as stories go (and there are MUUUCCCHH better ones from Chiang Mai), but the 2 second version is that the Bangkok airport lost his bag. Explaining that to people that speak basically zero English makes for a bit of a hassle, but all's well that ends well and the next day Joe got his bag back...

On to the good stuff! We've had about 7 days in Chiang Mai so there its a ton of stuff to talk about and I need to save my typing stamina for the good stuff, so I’m gonna stick mainly to the big stuff ;). Chiang Mai city is in the far northwest part of Thailand, complete opposite end of the country as Phuket. Aesthetically it’s an analog of Bangkok except on a 1:64 scale, all the same stuff except nowhere NEAR the same number of people. We all liked it here much more than the big brother city for that very reason.

Right off the git go we were able to secure an awesome travel agent (a rarity for this country we've learned) that gave us lots of good information about her city, even in pretty decent English! While we were at odds trying to decide exactly how to plan our adventure she suggested that instead of booking a tour to do the “city stuff” we liked, that instead her son would drive us around to all the good stuff in the family car! Well ya can’t beat that idea so off we went. We stopped at a ton of different places (I think the guy put 150 miles on his car that day), the first of which was the “Model Village.” More or less the village was replica of some of the mountain tribes in northern Thailand. For a multitude of reason (lack of roads being the main one) it is difficult to get tourists to the real villages. So instead they import the villagers and pay them a few bucks to let tourists watch them do what they do. The highlight of the village was the Karen tribe, aka long-neck tribe, where the girls wear the brass rings around their neck to make it ridiculously looonng. Apparently, it’s supposed to make them more attractive?!?!

It is amazing how these people live in such a vastly different way than not only the western world, but also there non-city dwelling counterparts. The lifestyle is so amazingly simple that you have to be in awe of what they're capable of and how our world has left them behind. I would say it’s sad, but for the most part everyone in these villages is happy. It puts certain aspects of life in perspective when you see people striving by living off the land and being content. Everything they need is right in their little community from chickens and pigs to rice and bananas. They even grow all the bamboo to build their huts...defiantly amazing stuff.

Another stop was the Monkey show which was kinda cute. They had monkeys doing tricks like playing basketball and riding bikes, who doesn't like that??? You could also feed the monkeys bananas and peanuts which made for some good laughs and pictures. They even had a little baby monkey that you could actually play with (although it bit Gina lol).

One last notable stop on this adventure was the Tiger Kingdom. We thought it might be like the tiger temple (Bangkok), but this one was all tiger and no monks, goats, camels, peacocks, et al. In this one they actually let you play with the baby tigers for 15 minutes while a guy takes pictures of you. Kind of fun getting to “play” with a tiger. The guy took like 200 pictures of me playing with the beast; I felt like I was in a fashion show photo shoot...lol...save the jokes everyone!

Our next Chiang Mai adventure was the big trek!! This is the monster 3 day walk in the jungle that we've been psyched about for a looong time. Three days of elephants, hiking, tribes, and rafting who wouldn't be excited? So let get started. The trip started with a super long smog infested ride in the back of a pickup truck with 12 people... isn’t that how all good trips start?? I have my doubts. So after 2 hours of lung clogging fun we end up at the elephant station (I think station would be a good word choice??), where we were loaded with grub and strapped to the back of an elephant. If our elephants were the seven dwarves the one I was riding would have been Sneezy. If you didn’t think elephants could sneeze...you are wrong and the big long schnowser on their face is just like a shotgun barrel, one with a great affinity for me! He was also a hungry little bugger. I bought him a stack of sugar cane for the ride, but once he found my stash he refused to go more than 2 steps without more food. Which was good because that way the sneeze snot was always fresh and sugary for me...gross ;). For the record here, Joe was terrified of his elephant (which was very tame). I never did get a reason besides “he's unstable,” but again for the record, Joe is scarred of elephants. Feel free to use that one liberally Ray and Chris.

After the elephants, we started our voyage through the jungle! Its funny how pieces of the puzzle only come together as the picture unfolds. Not one person in our group managed to piece together that “hilltop tribe” meant that we might have to climb to the TOP of a HILL...ohhh I get it...Hilltop tribe…ugh. Four grueling hours of mountain hiking later we reached the summit of Mt. What-the-hell-was-I-thinking. Luckily it was 95 degrees outside which made it that much nicer ;), I was smart enough to bring 4 liters of water (which I drank all of) others were not so lucky and we were a very thirsty and tired group once we reached our bamboo hut aka hotel de' hilltribe. The village (Lahu) was much more authentic than our previous encounter, but still had that feel that lots of tourists went through there. They sold supplies (like water thank god...we still have 2 more days and we all drank all our water) and trinkets the villagers make. The bamboo hut thing was pretty cool and I learned three important lessons that night: 1) Hilltop village with no electricity + mountain water = coldest shower on earth, 2) Bamboo is probably one of the most uncomfortable surfaces one could pick to try and sleep on...do not attempt, the result will only end up as a sore back and no sleep, 3) Thailand in the middle of the night on top of a hill in a “wind permeable hut” becomes the Antarctic...dress appropriately...shorts are a bad choice.

Day two. Today we did about 6-7 total hours of hiking and hit a bunch of great stops. There were a whole bunch of little villages and waterfalls along the way to keep us well in awe and defiantly entertained. By far the best part of this hike was lunch, it was as authentic as you could possibly want. For plates the guide cut up some big banana tree leaves and for silverware he made chopsticks out of little bamboo shoots. So we had our jungle lunch at a waterfall miles from no where on our brand new jungle Tupperware. How cool is that! One of the villages we stopped at I bought a slingshot from a lady (how could you not buy a $1 slingshot in the middle of the jungle?!?) which provided for hours of fun. The best of which came from when a little jungle boy who decided to steal it from me and then spend the next hour having all of us follow (and carry) him around while he showed us all the different things he could shoot at. I should also mention that he was an amazing shot for a 3-4 year old...10 times better than any of us white folk. These tribal/jungle kids are all this cute by the way. I don't know where they pick it up, but they've got the cute kid act down pat. This same kid found Joe by the waterfall and demanded that Joe take his picture...and then that Joe let him take pictures with his camera. Take a look at the picture of this I post up its priceless.

Day three was more hiking and more villages, but we ended the day with a little white water rafting (didn't expect that, but hey!). Not quite up to New Zealand standards, but not too shabby. After that we did some bamboo rafting, which is basically impossible. We managed to sink ours on multiple occasions with ease. Then it was off to home for an early bedtime to make up for bamboo back, frozen toes, and 4 hours of cumulative sleep!

So it’s on to our last and final Chiang Mai adventure and actually our last adventure for the whole trip...how sad :(. We decided that it would be fun to rent dirt bikes for a day and explore the jungle in a little different style than the hiking variety. There was a guy in town that would do the tour, but it was a bit expensive and you went with a big group. Our wonderful travel agent decided to make something a little better for us. In hindsight we probably should have just paid the extra coin and follow the beaten path...but what fun is that? So anyway, she arranged for us (me, Joe, and a Canadian guy named Sean that we befriended on our trekking excursion) to rent some bikes from a local rental agency and she found us a private guide for the day to show us around and make sure we didn’t get lost or hurt.

This adventure has two parts: the really good and super fun part, and then the part where things start going wrong and “the fecal matter hits the air circulation device.” The good part was that we got to see some AMAZING country. Much better than what we saw on our hiking trip, probably mostly because we traveled 140 miles on those bikes that day on everything from roads, to logging trails, to full-on extreme dirt bike trails. We even crossed a few rivers over log bridges. We saw amazing waterfalls and some serious back woods country. In one of the towns we went to we were most defiantly the only white people there and its probably been awhile since the last white people where there also. What a great authentic perspective on the country. And speaking of authentic we had and even better experience where we stopped for lunch. This ended up being at a small village (REALLY SMALL like 6 total people). This place was really something, our guide told us that they hardly ever get visitors and even rarer from white people. As a peace offering we brought extra lunch (fried chicken) and some candy for the kiddos so of course they took us in with open arms. According to our guide they eat rice and chillies every day...every day that’s all they eat!!! I couldn't imagine what that would be like. These people made all of there own clothing too. All the way down to growing the cotton plants, dying it with local plants that produce dyes, and weaving the fabric! That’s absolutely amazing. We did learn that there is some issues getting medicine and other occasional necessities as one could imagine, so we decided to buy a few little bracelets and clothing from them to put some money in their pocket. They were as gracious as I've ever seen anyone...and I was so happy to have been given the opportunity to meet them.

Now on to the bad part. It turns out that the bikes we rented were pretty cruddy and cheap, and every time you brushed up against a tree something bent or broke. Which when coupled with a first-time motorcycle rider and a few crashes, makes for some serious problems with the equipment. To make a super long story short, Sean's bike puked out about 90km (60 miles) from home...ugh. We were able to find a repair shop and they took it all apart only to find that some of the internals were trashed..argh. So the owners decided to bring us a replacement bike to get us home...only they were 2 and a half hours away and we had already been out of commission for 3 hours!!!! Sooooo, we waited! Eventually we got our bikes squared away and make the LOOONG journey home in the middle of the dark Thailand wilderness! Which in hindsight worked out pretty good, because the drive through the mountains in the darkest of dark was beautiful and peaceful...I loved it!

When we finally got home at 10:45 pm (it was supposed to be 5 pm) we were exhausted and needed sleep. So we decided to take the bikes back to the rental agency in the morning. Now THIS IS WHERE LIFE GOT INTERESTING.

When we rented the bikes they took our passports for “insurance” which they were going to return once we returned the bikes (which is fine because they need to ensure that you don't sell the bike and flee the country). They decided to just keep one passport for the entire group...mine. This was fine and dandy as we had no intention of stealing the bikes. As we were told by the renal agency we had “insurance” on the motorcycles and we interpreted that damage to the motorcycle would be covered by the “insurance” we paid extra for. Apparently they had a different definition of insurance. They said that Sean was liable for all of the problems that were wrong with his bike, most of which were his fault, but was exponentially compounded by they fact that these bikes were compete garbage. Well, Joe's and my bikes were returned fine and Sean's was “returned”...I want my passport back!

Well I didn't get my passport back like I wanted and this is where things got ugly. The shop owners took Sean to the motorcycle repair shop to discuss what they were going to do with the bike and we were told to wait a few minutes until they got back to sort out the passport issue. I reluctantly said “fine” and waited. After about 45 minutes I had enough and told him that holding my passport ransom for a person that I didn't even know other than inviting him along on the trip was absolutely preposterous and I demanded my passport immediately or else I was going to call the US Embassy and start making problems for everybody. Well at this indictment the guy at the shop conveniently forgot how to speak his broken English...Enter stage left Justin's super temper when he's getting hassled. The line had been crossed, I was mad. I decided to forcibly take my passport. I saw it sitting behind the desk so when the guy got up I made a dash for it. Unfortunately for me, my anger prevented me from preparing a suitable escape route and in hindsight I shouldn't have even tried to leave the shop right away. Anyway, the way I decided to leave was a dead end which meant I had to reverse track and go back through the store and out the other side...ahhh crap they're gonna catch me lol. Well...they caught me. It turns out that little Thai guys are much faster runners than I am, haha...who would have though!

This is where things got super funny. In an effort to try and stop me one of the little Thai guys decided to do a super jumping ninja kick, like the perfect form kind with the tucked leg and everything. In his credit, he planned it really well and managed to actually hit me in the shoulder area. Unfortunately for him (and the other guys) he forgot to take into account that I am 3 times his size and weight. Lol...seriously this guy hit me and stopped dead in his tracks...ninja move over. I didn't even so much as budge and he went down to the ground! (in retrospect this is actually quite surprising especially considering it didn't hurt, i though it would hurt a little at least). He landed somewhat gracefully considering and gave me his full-on “I'm serious” ninja face and stance and I couldn't take it...I started laughing at him. I mean seriously I just took his best move without even a hiccup did he expect me to be scarred? He didn’t appreciate the laughing.

So at this point the game was up they had other people there so I couldn't leave without a huge problem, and luckily the motorcycle guide's buddy showed up and could translate my intentions. At this point they told me that I had to give them my passport back and wait for Sean and their crew to get back to the store. I decided that my version would be that I would wait for Sean to return, but the only way there were getting the passport back was to try and take it from me. I think at that point they realized that ninja moves were not gonna fly and a fist fight with a couple of 225 lb American boys probably wasn't going end in their favor. I got to keep my passport without any attempt to take it away. Shortly after this we just left...

Talk finishing our big trip with a bang :)

Phuket

gborchers3 — Mon, 9 Feb 2009 08:58:00 GMT

Let's first get this out of the way...its Pooh-Ket, the other option will get you funny looks from both sides of the language divide. You only get to make that mistake once, thankfully we got that phonetic challenge out of the way in Australia so we could save off looking like idiots...at least for a little while.

Phuket is an island that is on the western side of the southern Thailand split. Its only an island by a little tiny strip of river that connects the two seas on either side (Andaman sea and Gulf of Thailand...don't quote me on that my globe is in my other pants). Phuket is nice because it is a tropical beach destination near the equator. Phuket is also a tourist trap for the very same reason...ugh. Its funny how drastically the price of things can change just by going to an area that has more foreign people roaming around. Everything here (taxis, food, trips, clothes, etc) is at least double the cost it was in Bangkok!!! Especially the taxi's!!! Where we were paying 50-100 Bhat (about $1.50-$3.00) to get pretty much anywhere in Bangkok (even REALLY far away...think 45-60 minutes ride...good deal for $3 eh?) the cost to go a mile down the street in Phuket was 150 Bhat and 600 to get to the airport!!!! Sheesh!

The whole point of coming down to tourist central was to give the liveaboard thing another whirl. This time we booked with a company called Worldwide Dive and Sail. That's right...sail, we're gonna give it another shot. Kinda funny though, as it turned out, although we were technically on a "Sailboat" they don't get enough wind here to do any actual sailing, seems like they could have saved some money on sails to me! Okay in my book though, i cant imagine how long it would take to SAIL from dive site to dive site, let alone if you got caught in a current and they had to come pick you up. So I imagine this way is better, or at least safer, and in the middle of Thailand erring on the side of safe is fine with me. At any rate the boat was pretty cool; completely hand made from wood by the local Thai boat builders. So it had some serious character...the Sampai Jumpa!

The trip was to be a 4 day 3 night excursion out to the Surin and Similan Islands, with 13 total dives. Unfortunately being on a little sail boat in the middle of Thailand did not allow us the luxury of Nitrox, so we were limited to 4 dives a day and back to being concerned with no-decompression limits, bummer...I miss my Voodoo gas ;). We had a pretty decent mix of people on the boat, many of which were MUUUCCCH more experienced (and younger) than the Mike Ball demographics, lots of dive instructors, dive masters, and even a couple cave divers (clinically insane group they are!!!). I have to mention here our Irish trip coordinator (my best guess at what his position would be dubbed). This guy was capable of producing more BS than anyone i have ever met in my life! For those that know what i've grown up around this is no small achievement. Although he did provide us with quite a bit of entertainment throughout the trip, i think i speak for the group when i say 4 days was probably our limit ;).

All in all the diving was pretty good. Having just got off the great barrier reef kind of gave us a high level of expectation that would be pretty hard to fulfill. Although there wasn't NEARLY the amount of total sea life here as there was on the big reef there were a few individual things that made the trip worthwhile like: seahorses, ghost pipefish (these things are basically invisible...incredible creatures), cuddlefish, mantis shrimp, baby lionfish, new morays and nudi's, soft corals, and most notably the OCTOPUS. The octopus were absolutely awesome (and big) and gave us quite the show on a few occasions, i even have a video of one fighting off a coral trout. The major bummer of the trip was something that i've never experience in previous diving...diver infestation!!!! It seemed like every spot we went to had 4 other dive boats parked over top of it and the second you hit the water you could see 50 other divers looking around and poking at stuff! Diving is supposed to be a way to get away from everyone into a peaceful environment with no distractions...just you and mother nature. It most defiantly diminishes the appeal when you have 50 divers crashing into you or scarring away the dang octopus!!!!!!!!!!!!!

One last thing i have to mention about the diving here is the current. Holy moly is the current here a big deal. I think is has something to do with the relatively shallow waters and tidal movement, but these things are RIPPING! I have a video where about five of us divers are holding on to a ledge underwater to keep us from getting swept into the great blue yonder. In the video our bubbles are not going up towards the surface (like you'd expect) instead they are going straight out SIDEWAYS!!! That is some serious waterflow!

All in all it was fun, and defiantly glad we did it, but it was most definatley a FAAAARRR distant second to our Mike Ball adventure. Maybe we just needed our dream team posse back ;).

After the diving we spend a couple days wandering around the island of Phuket. The most exciting of which was the day we decided to heed the phrase "When in Rome...." Far and away the major form of transportation here (local and tourist) is the infamous moped. So for the first time in my (and Joe's) life we decided to try out these death machines that have been historically dubbed the "fat chick" of the transportation world (at least in the states). I should mention that Gina was only on the moped for about 5 minutes before she decided she was "so nervous i'm going to throw up" and decided to walk home...the traffic here is a little...um, different than back home. So off we went on our exciting 7 hour moped tour of the island! As much as it pains me to say this, these things may be one of the most fun methods of transportations available (this has some bearing coming from a guy who owns a 911). I think the fun level may have something to do with eminent death by an unlimited number of obstacles...who knows ;). I should also mention that the full 24 hours rental rate for what appeared to be a relatively new moped was a grand total of $6.00 American...gotta love the price of stuff here.

Our last adventure before heading north is yet again something that i could write 10 pages on the absurdity of, but i'll spare myself from reliving the experience. There is an attraction here that calls itself the "Disney of Thailand" called FantaSea. Where to begin...For as much as everything "Asian" is excessive, boisterous, and colorful; Fantasea takes it to the next level of excessiveness, boisterousness, and colorfulness. The main premise of the place is an elephant show with Thai dance performance intertwined, this was fine and dandy. But what really brought this place to the next level was the SUPER elaborate extent to which the market place outside the show was designed. I think the best analogy would be "Asian culture meets Dr. Seuss." A few examples. They had a black light reactive hamster cage that was the size of a normal bedroom. There was a temple full of albino animals: snakes, goats, hawks, TIGERS, and even a peacock...yeah...an albino peacock. All set in a sort of heavenesque blacklight fairytale theme. All in all a weird experience...but what the heck...its Thailand!

Off to Chiang Mai to ride elephants through the jungle!

Bangkok

gborchers3 — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 09:56:00 GMT

Its time to graduate from our warm and fuzzy English speaking and culturally analogous mates, to a new level of world travel...Thailand here we come!

It doesn't take too long in Bangkok to get the understanding that you're in a whole new world. But one that has a whole lot of new unseen culture (at least for us anyway) and the guarantee of a good time. Our first big event here was the taxi “experience” from the airport; I have to call it an experience because the word “drive” or “ride” just doesn't give it proper justice. I would like to take quick second to disavowal a popular American myth, being that “Asian people cannot drive.” This generality couldn't be farther from the truth; what we saw this taxi driver maneuver through would leave Mario Andretti sucking tailpipe exhaust. To these people getting from point A to point B is an “at any cost” situation. Normal driving protocol such as stop signs, center lines, and red-lights that us Americans (and Australians for that matter) are so indoctrinated with are merely suggestions here and most defiantly not punishable laws. I think in the 45 minute taxi drive we spend 10 minutes driving on the wrong side of the road, ran 6-7 red lights, and dodged at least 25 pedestrians. They take transport serious, but when a 45 minute taxi ride only costs 8 bucks American...what can you expect!?

To take the transportation differences a bit further I have to mention the Tuk Tuk's. These death traps are large chariot versions of a small motor trike, and the pavement acrobatics that these things are capable of put the taxi drivers to shame. Where taxi drivers would occasionally heed a safety hazard such as oncoming traffic or a red light, the Tuk Tuk drivers cannot be bothered. I think my most memorable moment in one of these things was when we were behind about 25 cars at a red light. Instead of waiting for the light to turn, the driver instead got in the far side of the lane of oncoming traffic, passed all 25 cars, and ran the red light through a barrage of intersecting green light traffic. All of this in a vehicle that looks like a motorcycle with a bench seat in the back! What makes the Tuk Tuks even more interesting is that they rarely ever take you to your destination on the first go. Oh no...before you go to “yada yada street” we need to take to you one or all of these places: gemstone store, travel agent, suit/dress tailor, or t-shirt/Asian crap store. I will give them credit where credit is due, the extend and depth of how well their individual scams for getting you to these places is planned is really staggering. When we were first getting the feel for the ways of the city, we got dragged to about 4 of these places that in all involved about 10 different Thai people playing various “roles” in the show...and it worked...for awhile anyway!

Ok on to the exciting stuff. On our first day in Thailand we were all thoroughly exhausted having traveled on minimal sleep for the last 27 hours and arriving at noontime. But we couldn't let a little thing like sleep deprivation stop us from having fun in a new country...right? So we decided to wander around Khao San road. Khao San road is basically the tourist Mecca of Bangkok. It’s everything you think of when you think Asian city...think Chinatown in New York and multiply it 10 fold. There are shops upon shops, most are actually in or on the street rather than in a traditional BUILDING, all selling different varieties of the same t-shirts, jewelry, jeans, hats, books, suits (these guys are the worst), and Asian trinkets by the truckload. There are also more food vendor carts than you could imagine business to support them, selling all sorts of “food (...a term used loosely here)” that has no English description or visual recognizability. All in all...the place is AWESOME!

After roaming around here for awhile we decided to go to Mauy Thai fighting tournament, kind of like kickboxing. This actually turned out to be pretty cool. For $50 we got front row seats right next to the action! The arena was exactly like you would expect it to be, completely cement, dirty, and filled with loud people screaming in a foreign language. Kind of reminds me of every Jean Claude Van Damn move I’ve ever seen, There were a total of 10 fights, most of which were pretty decent, we even got to see a knockout...delivered my a massive head kick. I don't think I would ever venture to mess with one of these little 105lb Asian kids; they've got some serious skills!

The next day we did some palace and temple hopping. That’s one of the main things about this country that I find so intriguing. For the most part, the entire population lives in poverty in little huts or apartments that are MAYBE 100 sq feet, but they have a TON of these lavish temples and Buddha statues EVERYWHERE. At any given point in the city you’re probably only a 5-10 minute walk to a temple of some sort. Most of them are absolutely amazing too. Look at some of the pictures from the grand palace, all completely done by hand and for the most part all of the stuff that looks gold...is real or at least plated...INCLUDING the outside structures! We did get to see a lot of really cool things, like the emerald (jade) Buddha for instance, but for some reason they are really strict on what you can and cannot take pictures of...and for most of the really good stuff it’s forbidden to take pictures. They go as far as to hire guards looking for only cameras. If you get caught taking a picture they remove your memory card and confiscate or destroy it! I'm not quite sure why they go through all this, but it’s their country so you better be polite and play by their rules!

The next day we took a day trip that hit all the major tourist attractions including the ever so popular floating market, the bridge over river Kwai (lol I didn’t even know that was here...I was surprised when I saw the sign), and Tiger Temple. I could probably write a few pages here, but I’ll try to keep it succinct, as best I can anyway ;). The floating river was basically a wet version of Khao San road (which im finding out mostly everything is). It was cool to see how they jam all this stuff on their boats...even the food vendors have it all figured out...deep fryers and all! We got to take a long boat ride into the market which was pretty neato. Surprisingly these things CRUISE! After perusing the various wares we decided to go to a “Cobra Show” (which we were informed by the signs is the best show in the world). The guys running this thing were absolutely SICK. These snakes were all deadly venomous and they were fighting them with no regard. I think one little story will pretty much sum the experience up. For one of the acts the keeper was antagonizing three snakes at the same time. Nasty looking and fast little buggers that coiled up ready to attack in a way that screams “Don’t mess with me.” After the keeper sufficiently antagonized these creatures he systematically rounded up two of them using his hands and holding on to their head, but what about the third??? In all seriousness, you can’t make this stuff up, this sick guy got face to face with this poised snake and preceded to do some sort of ninja front flip maneuver over top of the snake and ended up with the snakes neck IN HIS MOUTH!!!!! Where do you learn to do something like that!!!!!!! I think there's a message in all of this....Kids...stay in school or you might have to catch cobras in your teeth for a living!

Moving along, our next stop was the bridge over river Kwai and then on to the Tiger Temple. The Tiger temple was a bit of a surprise. This place was a like a big petting zoo...but with big dangerous animals. Nothing was caged (except the tigers were chained to the ground) and there were all sorts of random animals roaming about: buffalo, cows, peacocks, horses, camel, deer, ect ect. Kind of odd...welcome to Thailand. So we spend some time taking pictures of and petting random animals (including tigers). Where else in the world can you pet a tiger?? I love this country!

Our last Bangkok day trip was to the ancient city, which was where Bangkok was...before it was in Bangkok. If that makes sense. The basic gist of the place is that it used to be the capital before it was attacked and completely destroyed a few hundred (???) years ago. All that is left now is dilapidated stone ruins and partially dismantled Buddha and temples. Kind of a cool place, lots of history and its crazy to imagine that a few hundred years ago it was a huge city and now it is mostly just a pile of rocks! Some of the stuff has been fixed up over the years and several of the bigger temples are still in pretty good condition so you can really get a feel for how the city used to work.

Our last day in the city we decided to do something a little different and took a Thai cooking class!! Which turned out to be a ton of fun and REALLY good food to boot! We even had to go to the market and buy our ingredients...authentic eh? So now if any of us ever offers to cook dinner for you, you may want to give it a second thought! It might be some crazy Thai recipe we learned on the street corner in Bangkok!

Next stop Phucket for some diving, sailing, and a little beach time! Isn't it snowing in the states???

Mike Ball Diving Liveaboard (Full Report)

gborchers3 — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 04:05:00 GMT

Beware! this is a long one ;)

The day has finally come!!! The apex of our adventure, the Great Barrier Reef liveaboard. For anyone reading that hasn't heard about this facet of our trip; to make a long story short, we originally had plans to go diving off a boat called the Nimrod. Unfortunately this boat was sold to the Solomon Islands about 3 days after we paid our bill off, figures! Lucky for us our superman travel agent was able to strike up a deal with the operator of Mike Ball Dive Expeditions to get us on board his boat at an affordable discount. Mike Ball Dive Expeditions is like the Ritz Carlton of dive boats for this area. Second only to having your own yacht, this setup is the top of the pyramid. The company even appropriately dubbed the boat “Spoilsport” after it's dual aspirations. The voyage was to be 7 nights and 8 days (actually 6 full days) with top shelf food and top shelf diving, what more could one ask for???

I can honestly say that our main concern prior to boarding the ship was the people we were going to be shipmates with. Given that this operation is the “nicest” it is also the most expensive of all the options leaving Cairns. Unfortunately when it comes to somewhat pricey luxury boating one immediately assumes an older crowd. However when we got on board we were defiantly pleasantly surprised with a mix of people from all ages and even more countries, things are looking good. It only took about 30 minutes for the whole group to become instant friends and everyone to realize that this trip was going to be one for the record books! So with our new friends and a belly full of delicious champagne and cheese we set sail!

At 6:30 am the next morning we found out how serious these guys were about their diving. Richard, our fearless leader, used his internal air horn to announce it was time to get up and get wet....ugh...6:30 am...its gonna be a long week. In hindsight i think Richard really got some sort of cheap thrill out of punishing those of us who decided to stay up a little late at night with his crack of dawn shenanigans...some people are just sick! The plus side to the early wake-up was what we referred to as “Breakfast 1.” Nothing like rising out of bed to hot coffee (or MILO...lol...don't ever say you dont know what Milo is or your will suffer the Aussie wrath), croissants, fresh fruit, and yogurt. And then after our sermon-esque dive brief it was dive time! And there's nothing like a 7 am dunk it the water to wake you up if the coffee didn't do the trick.

After our wake-up dive the day improved dramatically. Waiting for us on deck after we got out of the water was a mountainous spread thenceforth dubbed “Breakfast 2.” After all, any good breakfast deserves an encore! Breakfast 2 put breakfast 1 to shame. There was bacon, pancakes, eggs, tomato's, beans, and even mushrooms. I think there might be something to this 2 breakfast a day thing ;). After the schmorgasborg we donned our sopping wet dive apparel and were back in the water (2 dives by 9 am...that's serious business).

After dive #2 we had our daily “free time” which amounted to about an hour and a half while we motored to the next diving location. And then the cycle was repeated...snack...dive...lunch...dive. Unfortunately there was only one lunch every day, but i don't think anyone noticed because i'm pretty sure no one was actually hungry 3 hours after eating 2 breakfasts!! But don't believe for a second that stopped anyone from having at least one full plate of food, with the likes of pumpkin ravioli, smoked barramuni, and FRESH MADE tomato soup...who could resist!

Ok, now we're up to 4 dives and its mid afternoon. Time for a 30 minute nap (for the non-diving community a nap is definitely needed after breathing 4 full bottles of air at 100 feet in 6 hours time)...and then it's time for the night dive! PS night dives are the best...even Gina who swore up and down that she would never do a night dive even fell in love after her first go ;)...me and joe love being right!

After our night dive was DINNER! I think anyone reading could probably guess at this point how dinner went. I'll save me the typing and you the reading...it was everything you could want it to be and more...my compliments to the chef!

So this little daily sequence was followed pretty much to a T for the next 6 excruciatingly exhausting days to a grand total of 26 dives or 25 hours spent underwater. That is if you didn't skip any dives...cough cough Beata, Ron, and Marsha cough.

Another benefit to paying a little more for this boat versus other cheaper options was their ability to go to reef locations that are MUCH more remote and therefore more pristine. Several of the spots we went to are only visited by their ship. There was even one site that we visited, due to the near perfect weather conditions, that has only been visited on 3 other occasions ever!!! How cool is it to think that we were probably in the first 50 people to visit the sight! The captain told us that that point we were about 2/3rd's of the way to Paupa New Guinea...hows that for off the beaten path!!! The name of this site was Shark Reef (ooohhh scary huh) because on previous stops they saw some of the biggest tropical sharks the crew has ever seen on the reef. We weren't quite so lucky (depends on what you consider lucky i guess), but it was still a beautiful wall dive. There's something erie and awe-inspiring about diving on the edge of the continental shelf where the ocean goes from 80 feet deep to over a mile deep almost instantly...

Another noteworthy dive site we visited was Cod Hole. At this site there where these HUGE potato cod (see the pics) that inhabited the area and due to the traffic seen at the location were quite tolerant of divers. We were able to swim right up next to these massive beasts who were as docile as a puppy...definitely made for some great pictures. We went back down at night here and got to see why these guys are so tolerant of us divers. It turns out that they don't have the best night vision in the world...but no worries...divers carry lights...queue the bloodbath. You've got to give them credit they're smart ;). They would wait for our dive lights to illuminate their dinner and WHAM, Joe actually accidentally sacrificed an entire school of fish...albeit on accident...sicko!! These cod also had no regard for us divers when it was feeding time either. I actually got headfirst smashed by one in pursuit of a hopeless fish. They also had a knack of being right next to you.....just outside your peripheral vision until you turned and almost had a heart attack! Nothing like seeing a 200lb fish 3 inches from your face in the middle of the night when your not expecting it!!!!!

We also had a shark feed site...This was great!!! They arranged all us us on the reef wall like a little diver auditorium and waived around a bucket of tuna heads until all the neighborhood creatures were interested. They then opened the bucket and watched as the frenzy ensued! It was something to see these sharks go after the fish heads ripping them apart like you see on the discovery channel. For all the mom's and girlfriends reading...don't worry they don't attack humans. In fact there terrified of us and we couldn't get within 10 feet of them without them scurrying off.

I could go on for days about all the different amazing dive sites, but that would bore both of us so i think thats good for now ;). I will mention real quick that we were again super lucky when a juvenile whale shark swam up to our boat. This didnt mean much to me at first, but we later found out that NOONE on the boat had ever seen one before and the divemasters and such had been diving the reef for 10-15 years each! So i guess we were pretty lucky!!!

After the 4^th day of the adventure half of the group had to disembark and allow another group to take their spot (you could purchase a half trip). The night before they were leaving we learned that the camera guy had been shooting a video the entire time!!! It turns out that Joe and Gina were aware of this, due to the fact that they made up 75% of the video by themselves! Myself and my new cronies were disappointed and made a pact that the next video would be much more entertaining. We now had a mission!

I can say with certainty that we accomplished our mission to the utmost extent and i think they sold a record number of trip video's after our (and the crew's) effort to raise the bar! To make a long story short the troublemaker (and Diva....hahah Beata) group, comprised of: John, Marsha, Claire, Ron, Beata, and Myself, devised a few cheeky underwater shenanigans. the first was a 6 man pyramid from the deco bar. Number two was our underwater poker game complete with cards, beer (cans anyway), hats, sunglasses, and a bit of NARCOSIS. Unfortunately our well planned poker game had one flaw...the sand was at 110 feet...oops...too late to back out now! So we had our fun little game and got the whole thing on video...I think my favorite part of the whole bit was john saying “I wasn't narced” and then seeing him in the video holding his cards with the numbers facing the group...completely backwards!!!! hahaah suuuuuuuurrrreee you weren't narced John ;). We even finished the bit with a little dance (lol at Claire on this one) and some YMCA...Yeah...the video is funny ;)

Ok one last thing and then I'm done ;). We decided to get our advanced diving certification on the trip to avoid pointless hassles when trying to do more advanced dives. I want to take a second to thank Shae for teaching us the most useful diving skills to date such as underwater air “smoke” ring blowing, advanced front flip water entry procedure, and my person favorite that just by strapping a compass on Gina's wrist she becomes 10x less nervous and fidgety even though she still has NO CLUE WHERE THE BOAT IS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mike Ball Diving Liveaboard (Pre-Blog)

gborchers3 — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 01:14:00 GMT

Ok all!!!

we're back on land safe and sound. I have to say this was one of my favorite adventures not only of this trip, but of my life!!!! I think joe and gina will definately agree. We had some amazing diving, super amazing food, and some of the best company you could ask for (hi john, marsha, claire, ron, and i guess beata ;) ). I'm prepared to give a full account as soon as my brain feels like it fits in my skull again!!!!!!!!!! 26 hours underwater in 6 days, with max depths of over 120 feet...my body hates me!

Stay tuned for the full account...hopefully i can accurately portray how good of a time was actually had!!!!!

Townsville and North

gborchers3 — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 02:34:00 GMT

Ok sailings over and its time to make our way towards the final destination. A few interesting things have happened over the last few days, some good...some not so good. First off we made the executive decision to change our flight to leave Australia 9 days early and spend a little bit more time in Thailand instead. Because of the way our flights were originally set up we would have been backtracking back to Brisbane over 10 days to make our flight out. There really isn't enough in the northern part of the country to warrant doing it over again, so we figured the time would be much better used exploring new lands. This new plan will give us about 23 days in Thailand vs the 14 we were looking at before….muuuch better!

Later the same day Gina decided to go to the eye doctor to have her eye looked at (its been bugging her quite a bit apparently). She was then given the wonderful news that she has some eye infection/ulcer that requires a bunch of medicine and she can’t wear her contacts for 3 MONTHS!!! haha she looks so funny in her glasses...easy teasing target for me and Joe ;). The unfortunate part to the whole thing was the new problem of Gina's diving. This actually led us to our FIRST international travel problem/argument. Without getting into the gory details we had a dive booked for a wreck which Gina obviously couldn’t go on. When we tried to tell them that Joe and I would go, but Gina would not, the owner of the place flew off the handle. It was actually pretty bad, he was swearing at us and insulting Americans and America among a long list of other offenses, including pulling Gina aside and screaming at her for her eye problem. At that point we just left before a little problem turned it to a MUUCCCHH bigger problem...(note to all international businessmen: don't mess with American women!!!)

Sooooo, alternate plan! We headed north to a town called Townsville, which was a great little tropical city. We all decided that if we had to pick a town to live in here in Australia...this would defiantly be it. The city itself was about the size of Kalamazoo (which made it the biggest city in Queensland). They had an impressive beach front park that had beaches with stinger nets, biking and running paths, a huge jungle gym (oh yeah), and a free water park with slides and the whole bit! There was also a huge mountain in the middle of town that you could drive to the top of and get a 360 degree overlook of the whole city and coastline. We were impressed!!!

From town you could take a ferry to Magnetic Island. Magnetic Island is an old military fort perched about 15 miles from shore. Because of its isolation they have populated it with lots of animals and plants which make it awesome for hikes and camping. The island also has the highest concentration of wild Koalas in the country. We arrived at the island a little late in the day so we weren’t able to explore the whole place, so we opted to do the most popular “Fort Track,” which takes you up to all the old military shacks and gunnery. Although the gun's themselves were gone the HUGE cement footings were still very intact and you could get a feel for how massive these things were. According to the signs the guns could be fired accurately up to 20km (14ish miles), and they were only fired one time during the entire existence of the stronghold. You'll never guess who they shot at… of course, the US Navy, albeit accidentally. The whole walk was great! We were even lucky enough to see 3 wild Koalas on the hike: a mother and baby, and one bachelor. Unfortunately Joe and I are both complete morons. Joe forgot to bring his camera's memory card and my battery only had enough power for about 10 pictures.....soooo, the “proof” of how nice this lil island was doesn’t exist!!! doh! All well, you'll have to take my word on it.

On a funny side note, while we were waiting for our ferry to the Island I decided that I would like to enjoy a delicious ice cream cone. While unwrapping my ice cream I was disheartened to find that instead of the delicious ice cream I was planning on seeing, I was instead given a plastic replica ice cream cone?!? What a dirty trick, I can still hear Joe and Gina laughing about this in my head. After a few minutes of digging through the trash can for the wrapper and some reading I learned that I was the proud winner of an MP3 player...yay...I really just wanted an ice cream. I did all the registration paperwork to redeem this thing, but I have really low hopes that they're going to mail it all the way to the states for me. It figures the one contest in my life that I win and I’ll never see the fruits of it ;).

Whittsunday Sailing

gborchers3 — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 02:26:00 GMT

Sailing the Whittsunday Islands is almost an iconic activity for the east Australian coast. It’s like the Disney World of Florida, you almost have to go. The Whittsunday island chain is set pretty close to shore and quite close to one another making them ideal for sailing around...or so we were told by our trusty captain. There are 74 total islands in the area and a whole bunch of reefs scattered about. From what I was able to discern these reefs are not actually part of the Great Barrier Reef, but rather what is called the Inner Reef system?!? For the sailing, Andrew set us up with a company called Southern Cross (they love that Southern Cross constellation here!!! everything is named after it) which has a bunch of boats to suit every need and income level (one was $25,000 a week per person!!!!!). Having never sailed before we decided on a 3 day / 2 night excursion thinking that love it or hate it 3 days would be pllleeeenttty of time on the water....In hindsight we couldn't have been more correct.

Our boat was called EUREKA! 2 and was a retired 60 Foot long American Cup racing sailboat. When we first signed up were super excited about being able to spend a few days on a RACING boat, but it didn’t take long for us to piece together the puzzle that “racing” boats are not built for what normal people would consider “comfort.” We defined it as the equivalent as driving a NASCAR car across the country...It would be awesome for about 50 miles, then you would regret the commitment!

As you can see by our pictures the living quarters for the 14 of us were pretty “cozy.” We were lucky enough, if you want to consider it lucky, to have our own private room (or sauna). There were a few people that had to SHARE a bed with a random person because there weren't enough single beds for everyone...sounds kinda overbooked eh? One girl even opted to sleep on the bench around the kitchen table, haha. Our private room wasn't a whole lot better though. Because it rained every night at sea you couldn't really leave the hatches open to let air in or the room would flood, and for the same reason you couldn’t sleep up on the main deck either. So basically you had no choice, but to sleep in the unventilated room that had a relative humidity of 99% and a temperature of about 95 degree's!!!!!!!!! Joe actually got dehydrated because he sweat so much during the night, and Gina finally decided that sleeping in the rain was better than bathing in Joe's dirty man sweat...I cant say I blame her!

Aside from all that there were parts of the adventure that were great! Sailing itself was awesome (when it wasn't raining), its really interesting watching the captain determine the positioning of the sails and maneuvering the boat at the right time to take advantage of gusts and whatnot. We were even encouraged to help out with raising the sails and occasionally steering. One of the coolest things about whole process is how before the sails are up and in action you hear a ton of noise from the hollowing wind and flapping ropes/sails and the moment the sails catch it goes basically silent except for the sound of the water! I will say that there's quite a bit more that goes into the process than I originally imagined and we defiantly have a new found respect for those that can do it well.

We made a few stops along the way two of which were for snorkeling (as you can see by the pictures) which was pretty good considering each of the spots probably sees 100 people a day every day of the year. There were a lot of clams which are one of my favorite things to see so that makes it all worthwhile. The only land based stop made during the trip was to the famous Whitehaven beach. According to the locals this beach is always rated as one of the top 10 in the world. The main reason for this being the whole beach has sand that is 99.9% silica. It’s perfectly white and the sand particles were almost like powered they were so fine. This superfine sand gets suspended in the water and when hit by the sun reflects a perfect blue turquoise color that makes it look like the most topical place on earth. Unfortunately we didn’t have too much sun the day we were there, but it was still pretty spectacular nonetheless.

The beach also had these MASSIVE swarms (1000's) of tiny little crabs that moved like an army across the sand. If you tried to walk towards them the entire group would move like a blob of oil on water, and if you managed to get real close to them the entire group would instantly burrow themselves underground and in 10 seconds they would all be completely gone! I took a video of these guys doing this, it’s really something to see. I'll do my best to post it up on youtube at some point ;).

Town of 1770

gborchers3 — Mon, 5 Jan 2009 08:42:00 GMT

The town of 1770 (yep 1770 is the actual name of the town) was a cool little destination that Canada Kim (hi Canada Kim) let us in on. Very cool little (very little) town that is just as picturesque and fun as the big coastal towns except hardly any tourists. This is probably because....da da dadaa.... its 50 miles off the expressway in the middle of nowhere! Here I finally got a taste of adventure that I’ve been missing from New Zealand...Kite Boarding! I've seen these crazy guys doing this on the beach for a few years now and have always been interested except for the fact that is super dangerous if you don't know what your doing as well as being pretty new and unknown as of yet. There's a guy here that advertised lessons (perrrfect) to get you rolling. What he didn’t tell me was that your first lesson is how to fly the kite and you didn’t get to board until your second lesson. All well. I did have a lot of fun letting the kite drag me through the water and doing big super jumps with assistance from the kite! Now i need to finish my lessons because this sport is AWESOME! and not just because you get to wear a sweet helmet!

Our next stop is sailing in the Whitsunday Islands!!!

Gold Coast

gborchers3 — Sun, 4 Jan 2009 08:36:00 GMT

The Gold Coast is Australias equivalent of Orlando, Miami, Panama City, and Daytona Beach . It's the vacation destination for not only foreign tourists, but also Australians. EVERYONE here is a tourist! It really is a beautiful part of the country though. Golden sandy beaches with great surf waves and towering behind was heaps of high rise condo's and hotels as far as the eye can see. We decided that we had been in a campervan for tooooo many long nights and it was time to take a vacation from our vacation and set up post in the biggest of all the gold coast cities “Surfers Paradise.” How could a town called Surfers Paradise possibly disappoint! So after 50 phone calls we finally found a hotel that could squeeze us in (no air conditioning though...ugh). We spent the next few days tearing up the beach and reaffirming that we (me and gina that is) in fact cannot surf! Joe called it quits back in New Zealand. All well, I guess I wasn’t destined to have long flowing blonde hair and live in a tent by the beach...maybe in another life ;).

We also decided to spend New Year's here too. A street vendor convinced us to go on a “party boat” that was supposed to have a spectacular view of the fireworks and be an awesome party. It tuned out much as we expected however, a boat filled with drunks that was 2 miles away from the fireworks. It was fun though, albeit crowded, and the fireworks were crap anyway so not much was lost. After the boat we went to a bar that they let us into for free (and line jump) which actually worked out really well as town was CRAAAZZYYY busy! Joe and Gina went home after awhile, and I decided to go watch the sunrise on the beach with some friends we made on the boat from none other than New Zealand (half of which were maori)! Whew.... long night! But it’s not every day you can see the first sunrise of the year in a country halfway around the world 15 hours before your friends and family ;).

I should also mention that all of these places had a dress code so we had to leave behind our synthetic shirts, zip-off hiking pants, and boots and go shopping for a “normal” outfit. I forgot what normal clothes feel like!!! and now I want my comfortable and oh-so-cool hiking stuff back!

And for those of you who this will make sense too. Doover was in full action and I think a new “Doover-usalem” has now risen. The “man-drought” has no effect on me....damn.

Nimbin (Joe's Favorite)

gborchers3 — Sat, 3 Jan 2009 08:32:00 GMT

I could type a book about this place all by itself. I don't even know where to start describing the things I saw in this town. I actually laugh every time I think about how this place even exists. I honestly think the best and shortest way to describe Nimbin is the picture of the sign I used as the heading for this journal story, “All pot dealing outside Pleeze.” This my friends was not a joke.

Nimbin is a little mountain town about 70 miles from any other major established “normal” city, which is good for Nimbin because these people need separation. The town is more or less completely composed of hippies that decided that the 70's were perfectly fine and instead of moving on they would instead just isolate themselves from the normal population and continue on quid pro quo. Take a look at the pictures to get a feel for this place, but the ENTIRE town revolves around marijuana and it is NOOO secret. The museum was probably my favorite part of town. The entire thing looked like an overzealous interior decorator from Applebee's was given LSD and told to go to “fill ‘er up.” They had 10 of EVERYTHING in this museum and everything was painted with tie dye and pot leaves. Everything was covered in poems and graffiti and story stories about “times they were high.” It was Eric Cartman's worst nightmare (+2 points if you got that joke). The only thing that was better than this was the BLATENT use and sale of marijuana in the museum and in the “mingle garden” behind it. I probably got asked to buy pot 5 times while I was in that museum, and on estimate I saw about 10 drug deals go down. Right out in plain sight in front of everyone. I even saw the guy running the museum coffee cafe rolling a joint on the counter where he made the coffee.

The rest of the town followed suit perfectly. Out of every shop you could smell people smoking pot and playing bongo drums and whatever else hippies do when they're stoned. All the shops in town sold Hemp EVERYTHING: rope, oil, medicine, shirts, pants, hat, BRICKS, flour for baking, ect ect ect. They had about 5 “herbal” medicine shops that sold bottles of who knows what to treat everything from cancer to diabetes. The only two places not overrun by hippies was the police department and a real live actual pharmacy. Speaking of such, I wish I would have talked to the pharmacist there and asked him what in the world he was thinking when he decided to build a pharmacy HERE OF ALL PLACES!!

BTW....because I know everyone is gonna ask..NO we didn’t buy any pot from these people. In fact I’ve never seen Joe so disgusted with anything since I’ve known him (including “the cod”). He actually didn’t even say much all day after the experience...kinda funny ;).

Christmas

gborchers3 — Fri, 2 Jan 2009 08:24:00 GMT

Christmas in a campervan was spent the same way as the rest of the world.....opening presents!!!! The only complication was that Gina was the only person that bought any presents...awwweee isn’t she sweet. Well before you think that let me tell you what she got me and Joe, “MUSK flavored Life Savers.” Yeah you heard that right MUSK, in the words of Joe “they actually taste like your licking an old man.” ...ugh...thanks Gina ;). In her defense she did get us some other candy that was much better, but not quite enough to wash the taste of Stetson’s out of my mouth though!

So back to the adventure. I think we had what most people would consider an “average” Christmas day, we hiked the largest waterfall in Australia, Ellenborough Falls...That's average right?!? it was pretty spectacular though; the little sign by the entrance said that it was over 200 meters tall which is about 650 feet (decent eh?). One of my favorite things about this country is there faith in the “Darwin Theory” i.e. the stupid of the earth will eliminate themselves. Because of this they do not “Americanize” things like this by putting huge fences up to block you from getting “too close” (which is usually “nowhere near close enough”)... Instead they opt to inform you of how close they suggest you get and if you decide to push the limit then you better be careful! I mention this because, due to this understanding we were able to CAREFULLY make our way to the base of the waterfall and get a good look (and lots of pictures) of something this beautiful the way it was meant to be seen, naturally from surrounding rocks and trees, not from behind a chain link fence!!! Ps...we all survived ;). And what ride back from something in the middle of nowhere would be completely with out some story of a major road hazard blocking out passage. Ellenborough falls came though for us with a new one! About 75 cattle standing in the middle of the road with absolutely NOOO intention of getting out of the way! Luckily I wasn’t the one driving for this event, so I got a great laugh from the back listening to Joe honk and scream obscenities at livestock that couldn’t be bothered. I want Joe's brothers to take 5 second and try to picture it...yeah...it was funny. Kinda like “the cod,” same disappointment but with a little more anger ;).

This neck of the woods was called waterfall country, compete with an expressway called “waterfall way.” So there are quite a few other pictures mixed in there of other waterfalls from the area, but no wonderful stories of adventure to accompany :(. There are also a few pictures in there that are different, I learned a cool new trick with my camera and those were the best fruits of 3 hours worth of messing around. Some of them are pretty cool I thought ;).

Another stop along the way called “Hat Head National Park” has a good story. As you can see in one of the pictures the beaches here open to people who like to swim O'natural, which is fine, except for the fact that they don’t tell you until you actually take the 45 minute hike to the base of the hill to the beach!!! Where there was, conveniently placed, a set of naked dudes. Luckly us....lucky us. How come its never beautiful women like the movies suggest??? To clear our minds from the dangle we quickly left and stumbled across another gaol (prison). It was the Australians version of Alcatraz on the big secluded point in the ocean. It was used to house affluent prisoners from World War 1. Considering the view they had every day I’m a little jealous...

North Of Sydney

gborchers3 — Thu, 1 Jan 2009 08:18:00 GMT

Ok. Now we're back on the northbound track! Before i get too far I want to take a second and touch on a few pending issues from previous conundrums. First off...Mayonnaise. To my complete dismay we have yet to find a suitable mayonnaise substitute and we are currently on our 4^th bottle. On bottle three we thought we were on to something when, after examining the nutritional information on the back of the package, we found the one with the highest saturated fat content. Logically, even if the taste was off the delicious fat would make up for it....wrong...sooooo wrong. The second issue is that of our sweet 1980's cassette radio. In our travels we managed to happen upon a used book/cd/vhs/cassette shop and of course took the time to peruse their wares. To our delight found these rock solid statues of American music: Otis Redding, the Beatles original hits, the Eagles first album, the sound track to Rocky 1, an UNOPENED big band Christmas from 1980, and my personal favorite 1993's top dance hits. Things are looking up!!!! The unopened Christmas cassette was really something, i almost felt bad unwrapping this perfectly preserved artifact of music history. That was until about 10 seconds later when i dropped the stupid case and the little tab that holds the cover on broke off, seriously how were we able to live before mp3s????

Ok back to the fun stuff! One of the interesting stops we made along our way north was a sand dune area near the town Hawks Nest called “Dark Point.” It was interesting for two reasons. First, it was a big white (almost pure quartz) sand dune that ran along the water and second, it was a sacred Aboriginal place where for the last 4000 years they have done ritual burials and various other “tribal stuff” there and over the recent years the blowing sand has uncovered lots of artifacts from these rituals. Apparently most of which are found by people just walking along the beach. Aside from this, it was almost completely deserted. Nothing like a pure white sub-tropical beach that you can have all to yourself on a beautiful summer day...I'm jealous of these Australians!

Another kinda funny story about “Dark Point.” Like everything cool here in Australia it was 25 miles down a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. Now while this is not unusual for us, what was unusual was as we were trying to make our way north the road we were on made abrupt dead end into a river...ut oh! So after a little bit of “oh crap now we have to backtrack 50 miles” we saw a sign for a ferry up the road. Things were looking better. So we drive to this “ferry” to find it was basically a 50 ft long metal dock that was attached to a cable system that you parked on, paid the guy 2.50 and then he activated a big winch system that pulled the dock across the water another 40 feet to the other side. I have never even heard of such a device!!!!! But we would have gladly paid 10 times that amount to not have to drive 50 miles down dirt road in the wrong direction!

The Blue Mountains

gborchers3 — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 23:06:00 GMT

Next stop after Sydney...The Blue Mountains. Hard left at Sydney and 100 km into the bush! HAHA, Joe's gonna kill me, but I have to tell the story about his super awesome driving on our way out of town. To give ya the short version, we parked in a parking structure on our way to the zoo. On our way out Joe was driving and all the sudden heard a huge CRUNCH sound....ut oh...So we get out to examine what could have possibly happened only to notice that there was a bunch of fiberglass pieces lying on the ground! Joe (and me and gina..i guess) didn’t notice the low overhang sign. The suspension steel above had officially removed our air vent...oops. Thank god we didn’t keep going because the next one would have taken off the roof!!!! That was a tense 15 mintutes. We almost had a convertible!!!!!

I think the most important lesson of this trip was that anything worth seeing in Australia is just a blurb on a map and a mandatory 25 miles on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere!!!!!!! Of all the things we've done to date the best stuff by far is miles and miles away from the tourist crowds and even the nearest petrol station and off on a dirt road...I think there might be a life lesson buried in there somewhere ;). The Blue Mountains were no exception.

One of the better stops in the Mts was the Wentworth Falls; the falls themselves were pretty lame, but the hike up to them was carved out of the side of a cliff face. It’s hard to describe or take pictures of, but it looks as crazy as you'd imagine! The side of a cliff tunneled out so there was just enough room to walk, albeit hunched over for a good portion of the hike!

After this we got off the beaten path and into the good stuff again...FINALLY! It would take 5 pages to describe next few hikes (some of which were 3-4 hours and most we're really good!) so I’ll just touch on our a few of our favorites. The first was called “The Grand Canyon” (that sounds a little familiar!?!?). This one a long bugger (3-4 hour) with a whooole bunch of climbing, ugh. At the top was a big rock face cliff and at the bottom was a Jurassic Park-esque rainforest with a river. Beautiful stuff. I also got in-touch with my new Canadian heritage and built one of those rock men they're so proud of!!! You better be proud Kim!!!

Our second highlight was probably the Kanagra-Boyd park which had a beautiful waterfall after climbing down (and back up) 500 stairs. And more notably this unnamed cliff view that was quite possibly the most dangerous thing I’ve ever seen (which is saying a lot considering my stay in New Zealand). The path to this thing led right to the edge of a mountain cliff...no fence, no guardrails, no safety devices whatsoever. And this thing dropped off like 700-1000 feet...straight down....STRAIGHT DOWN. To make matters worse the path leading to the edge was sloping downward and covered in moss, I can only imagine if it were wet and slippery. I took a video and i'll figure out how to post it up, you honestly won’t believe that this exists. It made the big lookout with the safety fence we found the previous day seem like childsplay. Speaking of that, could you imagine taking kids to this thing!!!!

We made a few other stops, more hiking, more caving. Joe also got pulled over and had to submit to breathalyzer!!! That’s the kind of driving I have to deal with ;). There’s more to this story that makes it look better for Joe, but I think I’m gonna leave those details out. :D

Sydney

gborchers3 — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 22:55:00 GMT

SYDNEY!!! Officially one-third of the way to Cairnes! I think, like any other major city in the world, you could probably spend a month here and not see everything, but then again it’s just a city...kinda like every other big city in the world ;). We decided to spend three days here to get a good look around and then continue on our merry way.

The first day we went to the big Sydney Aquarium! The aquarium was pretty similar to most other aquariums in the world, but was pretty fun nonetheless. They did have a few pretty cool noteworthy things like everybody's favorite the duck-billed-platypus. It was much smaller than I expected though; I was expecting a penguin sized thing and it was more like the size of a small duck. Of course there was a huge shark tank to wander under and around. In all honesty though I thought the Melbourne aquarium was a little better...bummer ;)

We had a bit of time after the aquarium to wander around town. I think my favorite part of this walk was seeing a little Asian teenager try to play Spiderman on one of the big water fountains. Much to our amusement this ended in a very wet Asian teenager! One other big stop was the China Garden smack dab in the middle of town. This garden was great; there were all sorts of wood carved dragons and Buddha statues. Each little section had a plaque that had some outlandish Chinese explanation for the placement of the rocks that caused good spirits to wash away the errs of our karma's misgivings...or something like that! We took the opportunity to take some ridiculous pictures...Yeah, we were that bored.

Day two was spend mainly wandering around and seeing all the must sees of Sydney: the Opera House, Bay Harbor Bridge, The Rocks, Circular Quay, ect. All of which were exactly like we expected and have seen in 1000's of pictures. I will mention that for all 9000 pictures I’ve seen of the Opera House I have always wondered what they put on the roof to make it white. Well now I know...and if you look at the pictures you too will know! That is why I flew 6000 miles across the globe, mission accomplished ;).

We also stopped by the “Australian Museum,” thinking it would be about the Aborigines and their history as the only culture to survive 30,000 years. We were wrong. Although we were disappointed about the lack of historical stuff they did have a few cool exhibits, the most notable of which were the 2008 National Geographic Photo Contest display and the skeleton room. I think we finally realized that Joe has a picture taking problem when he was taking pictures of other people's pictures! The skeleton room was basically just that; a room full of skeletons. Most of the time when you see skeletons they are of dinosaurs or things that are extinct; this place was all skeletons of things that were still alive (well not these examples per se) including people! They actually had a whole living room setup with a guy in a chair, the bird, dog, and cat...Creepy eh? This museum also had on display the world's biggest private mineral collection. I'll try to hide my overabundant enthusiasm...

Our last day in Sydney was spent at Joe's most anticipated destination...the Sydney Zoo! I wonder about Joe sometimes. The zoo was pretty similar to most zoos’ you see with one MAJOR exception, the view! The zoo was set on a little peninsula just north of circular quay (opera house and bridge area), and you could see the whole Sydney sky-scape from most of the areas of the zoo. I think that may have actually been cooler than the zoo itself! Take a look at the pics! They had a few cool animals at the zoo worth mentioning like Dingo's (they look like German Sheppards), a pygmy hippo, and Koalas (which I’ve decided look like old men). They also had a display of the deadly snakes of Australia (which there are quite a few, 20 of the top 25 live here). I took pictures for future reference ;). It was at this point I was able to identify the snake I had seen earlier on one of our hikes in the south, which turned out to only be the second most deadly snake in the world (brown snake)...I’m glad he opted to leave me alone.

Sapphire Coast

gborchers3 — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 22:54:00 GMT

The next little portion of or trip was called the Sapphire Coast and it is the section that starts on the southern east coast and travels north along the coast to Sydney. Our first town was called Eden and of course the campervan park where we stayed was called “The Garden of Eden,” lame eh?

Eden is an old whaling town of umpteen million years ago, back when that was an acceptable industry. Because of this they have “The Whale Museum.” so as i am traveling with Joe “OMG Another Museum” Mayo...we of course went. The most interesting part of the whole museum was this story about “Old Blue,” who was a killer whale that would, to make a long story short, lure whales into shallow water and then take the whale hunters to where he stashed the whales. The story says that he did this for quite a few years and made this town one of the most successful whaling towns in Australia. After he finally died the town's whaling industry died almost immediately. Cool story and they even saved his bones and put them on display in the museum.

After this we continued on our previous plan of bouncing between national parks and doing hikes and whatnot. And of course more off-road caravaning!!! This time i even took a picture of one of the warning signs that must be intended for other people ;). To briefly describe a few of the more interesting spots, the pinnacles were really cool. They are the pictures of the cliff that has a layer of red rock on top of a layer of white rock. We didnt get the whole story of the geology behind them, but there were pretty neato nonetheless. Another good stop was in Kiama where they have a cave that extends into the surf which has formed a big blowhole near the end. Every couple minutes you heard a big WHOOOSH noise and then a 30 foot blast of water followed. They also had a portion of this area where they dug out all the rocks from the middle and lined the walls with cement, to make a big ocean swimming pool!

We also did two alleged “must do” walks that were supposed to be shipwrecks on shore...note to self do not let Australians drive your boat. The first one we drove 50 Km off the nearest highway and spend 2 hours searching for it after we found the correct beach...Its been since decided that it must be invisible. The second one we at least found, but were a little disappointed because all that was left of this huge ship was a section that was about 20 foot across and maybe 5 feet tall. Its amazing what 90 years of saltwater can do to iron and steel.

I have to bring up the story of our 50 km drive to the first (invisible) shipwreck. On the way out we decided to check out this beach called Bingie Bingie Beach. Now to date we have only seen about 5 total kangaroo's on all of our bush-hiking and 1000km of driving, and we thought we were doing pretty good. On our way to bingie bingie we popped out of a wooded section and into a old cattle field that had no less than 150 kangaroos!!!! They were EVERYWHERE. Joe was like a kid in a candy store with his camera, giggling and snapping about 300 pictures ;). In his defense though it was pretty cool seeing all these guys, i had NOOO idea there were that many of them around, they were even in the roads.

My final bushwalking story is by far my favorite for this part of the trip. We made the decision to get off the coastline for a bit (too much water...time for mountains again) so after perusing the map i found this completely random spot on the middle of the map called “Granite Falls.” Granite Falls had a few surprises for us we would soon find out. The first of which was that they were trying to keep it a secret; in order to find this thing we had to go DEEP into the forest on a real live one-lane two-track road complete with grass growing up the middle. This thing was WAY into the bush. When we finally got there and did a bit of a hike only to find that the great granite falls were completely 100% DRY. It was almost eerie looking at this HUGE (300ft tall) rock waterfall with absolutely NO water anywhere in sight. I should also mention that it was currently raining and had been raining for about 10 hours at that point so i have no idea why this thing was bone dry...Kinda funny though. So for entertainment purposes we decided to do what all little boys would do, throw things into it. We started with sticks and were amazed at the sound a little stick made when it hit the bottom of this thing and echo'ed back up. We later upgraded to a big rock (ok maybe a few big rocks), these were 10 times better as they basically exploded like a gernade when they hit the bottom. I actually took a video of this and as soon as i figure out how i'll post it up, i can only hope that you will be as entertained as we were ;), but i have a good feeling about it!

Our last stop on this part of the adventure was the MOGO zoo which was recommended, by one of the locals as being a don't miss thing. It was actually pretty interesting as they specialized in endangered animals and had lots of animals i had never even heard of before like white lions and big ugly tapirs. They also had red pandas which could possibly be one of the cutest animals on earth. I didnt take a lot of pictures here so i don't have much to post up, but Joe, of course, took about 600 so i'll have him post up some stuff. I also have been required to tell the story that i got “marked” one of the last 1000 Sumatran tigers left in the world. I think thats enough of that story though. You have to get the rest of the gory details from joe/gina as they obviously thought it was 1000% times funnier than i did!

Gippsland

gborchers3 — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 22:52:00 GMT

The next region we passed through in the caravan of fun was called “Gippsland.” Why it is called Gippsland i have NOO idea whatsoever and all 200,000 tourist guides and maps we've collected have never made mention of it, so...???. This area is the southernmost region of Australia and is basically all the land west of Melbourne extending to the east coast. It is made up of a lot of “unaustralian like” land, mostly mountains and rainforest.

Our adventure here started with rain, and a whole lot of it. The first 2 days we traveled the weather was HORRIBLE!!! The wind was blowing so hard that the campervan was being rocked from lane to lane. Needless to say there wasn't much sightseeing to be done, so instead we went a different route...Wineries! This area is well known for its wine making and there are a whole bunch of wineries scattered about. Ever see Yellowtail (Kangaroo on bottle is a giveaway) at the wine store? Thats Gippsland! The goal was to end up at Wilson Promenade (a very popular national park) and the weather would clear up for some hiking. Well that didn't happen. So as a plan B we opted to sit in our campervan and play Phase 10 and drink our brand new bottles of wine...party animals eh? It was actually pretty funny watching all the people in tents freaking out as their tents started to float and then scurry around for a new dry spot!! Gina said a few of the girls eve decided to setup a mini camp in the handicap stall of the girls bathroom. And for those whom i've had the camping conversation with.......THIS is why staying in a tent is NOOO fun!!!!

The following morning the weather broke and we were able to do our hikes at the Promenade. The most notable of which was “Squeaky Beach,” named so because the sand squeaks when you walk on it, but thats not what made it cool. For some reason there were a ton of these MASSIVE round and odd shaped rocks scattered around like someone dropped 45 ft rock marbles from space. They formed a maze that you could wander around and hide in. Of course i tried to climb all of them in an effort to get sweet pictures from the top. As you can see by the pictures this was a success (mostly). All except for the biggest one, unfortunately that was not quite as easy to get down from as i had intended and required a bit more climbing skill that I actually have. I think some of the other hikers noticed this, mostly because they sat down on the beach to watch as i SLOWLY made my way down (i think they were hoping for a fall!!!). Joe managed to capture the entire disaster on camera so im sure pics will surface at some point ;).

At this park we also got to see our first wild KANGAROO. To Joe and Gina's great pleasure it happened in much the same fashion as the seal incident in Kaikoura. Both parties we simultaneously terrified, and i got laughed at...im seeing a trend here with me getting laughed at ;).

The next part of the story has easily become our new favorite story between us. To make an extremely long story somewhat shorter, we were perusing our 2.5 million tourist maps and came across a road up in the mountains that sort of headed to our next destination (Terra-Burma park) and it was called “The Great Ridge Road.” Now having done “The Great Ocean Road” and being very pleased how could be pass up the opportunity to traverse “The Great Ridge Road.” It must be equally as amazing to be given such a similar name...right??? The answer to that question would be NO. This stupid road was an old ONE LANE rock road that hugged the top of these massive mountains with more curves and bends than a bowl of spaghetti and no guard rails, street signs, or road markers for 50 miles! Who would build such a ridiculous road??? A logging company trying to remove burned timber from the middle of Australia!!! To add another level of drama to the story, that storm/wind i mentioned earlier had knocked over a ton of trees that of course blocked the roadway on “The Great Ridge Road.” so a decent portion of our trip was spend excavating a path to squeeze our gigantic van through! At one point we came up to another guy who was clearing a fallen tree from the road with a chainsaw. We told him this same story and he got a good chuckle out of it and congratulated us for getting off the normal tourist routes. It was lucky for us that he was there, because there was NOOOO way we could have moved that tree without a chainsaw and we were already 30 or so miles (2 hours) into the road...UGH. Adventure here we come!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The rest of our time in Gippsland was spent bouncing around a few national parks doing mostly rainforest hikes (see pictures). At one point we found a city with a cave system in it. We opted to go on the cave tour, but were disappointed to find out we didn't need wet-suits or climbing harnesses?!?!?!? These guys need to take a lesson in fun from New Zealand!

Great Ocean Road

gborchers3 — Tue, 9 Dec 2008 22:49:00 GMT

Well we haven't made it one travel day and we're deviating from our original plan! The initial plan was to do the EAST coast of Australia (Melborne to Cairnes), but we came across some information that made us make a little change and go due WEST...The Great Ocean Road. How could you miss something called “The Great Ocean Road?” So west we headed in our quaint little “campervan of fun.” For anyone checking out the map, the great ocean road starts more or less in Geelong and heads along the very southern coastline of the country to about Adelaide. For a history lesson the roadway was built as a memorial to Australia's involvement in World War 1. I think some Australian guy stubbed his toe while vacationing in Germany during the war, but my knowledge of Australians involvement in the war is pretty scant, so i could be a little off.

So after driving for a few hours we accidentally stumbled across something which was more or less equivalent to a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow...Bell's Beach. Now your probably thinking Bells Beach sounds a little familiar, but you cant quite put your finger on it. Ok...Think Patrick Swayze...Think Keanu Reeves...Hrm. Yeah, thats right “Point Break.“ Now for those of you who haven't seen Point Break in the last 6 months (shame on you!) Bells Beach is in the very end of the movie where Patrick Swayze surfs the wave of the 20 year storm and dies! In all actuality it wasn't too much different than any other surf beach in the world, but you cant argue with its significant importance in world history! :)

Ok, so back to The Great Ocean Road. Take a look at the pictures to get the idea, but basically the entire coast is made up of sandstone which is VERY delicate, even to the touch. Because of this, the constant beating of the waves against the shore erodes the sand/rock away in very interesting shapes which are constantly changing and collapsing. The whole coast is more of less made of structures/caves/cliffs and most interestingly these tall islands, for lack of a better word, that just seem to pop out of the water. The most popular of which are called the “12 apostles.” Although later we learned from some local that there are actually only like 8 of them left because the rest all got swallowed up by the ocean over the last few years.

On our way back to Melborne (we had to retrace our path because a short cut through the outback seemed like a bad idea) we had horrible rainy weather so we decided to do some stuff a little further inland. One of the things we found was this cool place that had a rainforest (rainforest...yeah i know who'd thought rainforest here) walk, but part of the hike was on a suspended path up in the trees. It was actually pretty awesome, aside from the 1.6 million asian tourists that also decided to show up. Its a whole different perspective when you can do a hike through the forest and be 50-100 feet off the ground! They also had a little side path where there were dinosaur replica's scattered along the path. This was a riot, as you can see by some of my pictures!

A while back i put up the "great ocean road (pt2)" due to a memory card issue. Im gonna put up part one now so take a look if you want. Its gonna be a bit out of order...my bad ;)

Melborne

gborchers3 — Mon, 8 Dec 2008 22:48:00 GMT

AUSTRALIA!!!!! We've finally made it!!! And huge surprise its rainy and cold...I thought this place was supposed to be a desert? I think bad weather is purposely following Gina around, because it certainly cant be me or Joe's fault...and that only leaves Gina!

I am some what heartbroken to report that we had our first official “issue” with custom's. Just like NZ, this place is a little protective of their environment and subsequently one of the rules is that you cannot bring food from other countries with you through customs, or so i learned. Now before I explain the whole story i have to bring to light the issue of mayonnaise, i assure you it's important. The people of the southern hemisphere have a few things they haven't quite mastered yet, one is ketchup and the other is mayonnaise. For some reason, which logic completely evades, the Heinz and Hellman's companies have not brought what i consider staple American products into the NZ market yet. Because of this many “impostor” companies have attempted to create similar products and have failed beyond miserably. Needless to say we went thought about 6 jars of mayonnaise until we found one that was mildly tolerable. Having found what we considered to be an edible substitute, I made the executive decision to get an extra bottle to bring to Australia to ward off another extensive mayonnaise search in a new country. Unfortunately, the custom's official who searched our bags upon arrival in Australia did not think that my mayonnaise plight was reason enough to warrant me smuggling it into the country (note: i didnt know it was contraband until after we arrived) and therefore confiscated my poor mayonnaise. To make matters worse, i later found out that Joe also smuggled food into the country, except he didnt get caught...and huge surprise...it was cookies. Apparently he was worried that they wouldn't be available. There are so many jokes i could pick here, but i think I'll leave the exact joke selection up to the reader.

So moving along we finally made it to our hostel in the middle of Melborne and who did we see 2 minutes after we walked in the door...none other than the CANADIANS!!! How random is that, a different country in a city of 2 million people and we run into our canadian buddies 30 minutes after we arrive! I guess it is a small world!

The next day we decided to roam around Melborne and see what we could find. One notable stop was the old Melborne Gaol, which is basically a jail/prison. This was kindof neat as we learned about Ned Kelly and other famous inmates as well as all about hanging, good stuff. The apex of the visit would most notably be when joe decided to shut the door to one the the solitary confinement cells while i was inside. Neither of us was aware that the stupid door locks behind you and has NOT been modified from its original version i.e. i was locked in. After 20 minutes of waiting, and thinking about my revenge, Joe moseyed over and unlocked the door...He will pay.

We also visited the Victoria Market which was pretty cool. It was, more or less, a one stop shop for everything on earth. This outside market took up almost 3 city blocks and literally had EVERYTHING. They had one area about the size of a normal store dedicated to just meat: beef, chicken, kangaroo, crocodile, ostrich eggs, literally everything you could possibly ever want. There were also veggie/fruit and souvenir areas that were equally massive.

Then we went to the aquarium. Not too much to report here, it was pretty cool and was like every other aquarium in the world. They did have a shark tank with Great Whites in it. That was pretty interesting!

So then we got our campervan!!!! Words are tough to find that describe the level of awesome of this thing. Defiantly take a look at the pictures and then think........50 days. Its gonna be a long 50 days! For those who are wondering, joe and gina sleep on the bottom (sofa/kitchen table/master bedroom) and i sleep in the “loft” (plastic and plywood dome of death). A farting ban has been put into effect. We also have a sweet tape deck which we will need to score some awesome tapes for, i can only imagine what we'll find. And we have a stove, fridge, and sink so that's not too shabby! I'm SURE i will have lots of funny campervan stories for my future installments.

Ok, so this issue is getting a little long winded so i'll take a break for now. Just to give everyone a heads up, things are looking to be A LOT slower pace for Australia so im thinking that i'm not gonna write as much and for every town/stop. I think it will be better if i do it in sections. So be prepared to bigger entries, but fewer of them. Internet is a huge pain when you dont stay in a hostel every night, so there might be a bit of a posting lag....sorry :(

Australia = Big

gborchers3 — Mon, 8 Dec 2008 11:01:00 GMT

hey everybody!!!!!! just wanted to say that we're still here. I have lots of australia stuff to put up, but we have been CRAZY busy. this country is HUGE and i cant believe im saying this, but we've been hurrying because it looks like we're short on time!!!! Things are good and everyone is still alive, i'm not 100 percent sure the camper van will survive the entire trip. We are making sure that these 4000 miles are the hardest this thing has ever seen. I'm sure my stories and pictures will make u feel sorry for the poor vehicle ;). Internet has been a huge debogle too. As soon as i can get to a computer that has a card reader i'll post everything up!

For mom's and girlfriends ect...we are officially in sydney!

MIss everyone and Merry christmas if i dont talk to you!!!!!!!!

Poor Knight Islands

gborchers3 — Sun, 7 Dec 2008 03:28:00 GMT

The next and final stop on our New Zealand trip was to the Poor Knight islands. Yep you guessed it...another dive site...and of course another volcano, although this one is super dormant and long outside its volcanic prime. The islands are located almost all the way on the northern tip of the country, and for those geography buffs the closest you can get to the equator here. So all right!! Time for some WARM water!!!! HAHAHA....NO...the temps were a balmy 59 degrees. At this point Gina had had enough and decided to wear not only a two piece 7mm wet suit (giving here 14 mm on her torso), but also a fleece lined undergarment that was about another 5mm thick...she looked like the Michilan man and needed about 30 lbs of lead on top of all of the diving equipment just to sink. haha gina ;)

Anyway, these islands are allegedly the best sub-tropical diving in the world and they most defiantly did not disappoint. We spent two days here and did 4 total dives (2 for gina) and got to see some pretty amazing stuff considering the cold water temps. A lot of it was the same general items as White Island (nudibranches, fish, stingrays, anenome's, ect ect), but in MUCH higher numbers and significantly more different species. Again, i wont bore you with the diving hoopla, but take a look at the pictures to get a decent idea of what was around and multiply it by 1000 and thats what we really saw. I really like the up close picture of the stingray, i had to chase that guy down to 110 feet to get that picture. After a bit of courage mustering i was able to inch my way pretty close to the critter and get a really sweet close-up shot.

The most beautiful of the 4 dive spots was called Northern Arch. This site is famous for 2 reasons 1) it has the best encrusting life on the whole reserve and 2) its the most dangerous site (it's also called “incident arch”). I think the two reasons might be related as i don't think nearly as many people visit it as the rest of the island due to the relative danger. The dangerous part of the area is the fact that most of the island is relatively shallow (60-70ft), but this monster archway extends down to something like 150 feet and the beautiful sealife goes all the way down. I guess people have been known to get a little overly captivated by the sealife and end up in seriously deep water. All went well on our trip though and we got to see some beautiful stuff...we were very pleased! No scones though :(